I was in need of a serious amount of mulch material (and a truck) to complete some of the new composting beds this week. Here I am just about running out of steam after a long, hot afternoon spent shoveling. The fine ground brown waste was purchased from Organagrow mulch
This week feels like two. It is a hot week here in Hawaii. What better time to be carting about my body weight in fish heads? Yes, you heard me. Alright, so it isn’t an ideal time to be working with raw fish, but opportunity knocked, and I answered. The theme of the week is to make use of even more restaurant waste. What better place to make the most of the discarded fish bits from our beloved Ahi and Mahi Mahi? The Chefs have set me up with enough fish heads to enrich the new farm addition. I am getting my composting game in overdrive with the gloves pulled up high for this messy week….but I am ready and grateful for the challenge. And it should also be noted that I say a small prayer of gratitude for each fish that is added to the soil building project.
Fish composting and fish elulsion making are on the adjenda.
Dark green, with light green and gold freckles, Dream Keeper is a new organic squash that I created by cross-pollinating two strong C. Moschata strains. The result…a beauty that is virtually mildew and bug proof without sprays. On the inside she is as gorgeous as a Hawaiian sunset.
For hundreds of years, farmers built the soil as a foundation for the food that fed their families. A foundation for their future. A built-in daily vitamin for themselves that would be harvested in the months ahead. Then something happened when I was still measured in relation to my Gandpa’s knee. There were better ways, they were told. Better? Faster, more….but really it was the point of diminishing returns. More lackluster crops were produced in greater numbers. A strong line was drawn. Agricultural crops were now treated very differently from vegetable gardens. Farmers seemed to hang on to the build the soil method in the vegetable patch that fed their family, and in times of need, their neighbors. Why was that? Was it because that was the domain of the woman of the house? She held onto these methods that are methods that organic farmers still use today. Rotating, covering, mulching…So was it scale that was the issue? Probably. In the never-ending American push that bigger was better, we learned quite late that bigger was simply bigger. And the “better crop” was in the farmer’s own veggie patch.
(Left: a May 1 image of the month old farm, at Right: the same view with additional planting beds fully realized six months later.)
One quarter acre all filled out after 7 months of farming. We can do it, everyone! Every inch of soil…and it is now deep rich soil, was lovingly built with one woman (me,) one shovel, and a fair bit of focus.
Chaos and order at the same time…but it worked, and I ate very well this summer
To answer some very valid questions that people have asked me about GMOs in Hawaii. Yes, GMO squash cross pollinates, and yes it would wipe out what I do. But to look for a solution to squash growing here in Hawaii is to look at the track record of squash varieties. The reason farmers are failing with squash is that they are planting within the family Pepo which is not hearty to any pest, nor to any disease. Pepo gets absolutely slammed with every disease here, and every pest, so that is why so much spray is normally associated with squash here in the islands. Plant the right varieties, namely family moschata, and your problems are reduced exponentially, and no sprays needed…and bomboocha sized squash are created.
Squash and Awe 